


Next to a Giant

by grandfatherclock



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 00:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14272530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: Nate and Amaya realize something crucial.





	Next to a Giant

This was real. This was finally happening. Nate had dreamt and fretted over this particular moment for so long, playing it in his head again and again with enough simulations to impress Zari's program, and yet, and yet.

How could he have prepared for the way the gentle sunlight over the wheat field would play on Amaya's skin, or the deep pink of the lipstick she chose that particular day? How could Nate, with his finite faculties, have pictured the wistful half-smile playing on her lips, or the irregular pattern of her breath?

Nate had loved history before he loved anything else. He remembered his grandmother Bettie holding his pudgy baby hands and telling him with a distant look in her eyes of Shakespeare, Cleopatra, and Socrates.

"We live on the shoulders of giants," his beloved grandmother had told him.

Nate as a lonely and terrified child could never have imagined kissing a giant, loving one so much he could barely breath, barely keep his silence. This was the rigidity of history, of course. The tragedy of it.

He turned to leave now, and reminded himself to take one step after the other. The terrain didn't make it easy. As he moved away from her, step by step, the wheat that beat against his legs seemed to murmur, push him to stay.

"Don't look back," Nate whispered to himself, again and again. One more step. One more step after one more step. It hardly seemed fair that something so all-consuming, so heartbreaking, could happen somewhere so peaceful.

Just as he stepped onto the cool and disaffecting metal of the jump ship, he heard a caught breath. Her caught breath, specifically. It was not the existence of the breath that stopped him, but the tone of it.

Vulnerable, yet denying.

So classically Amaya, he thought fondly.

A moment later, he realized he couldn't bear it.

He turned around ran back towards her, as if he was caught by gravity, or pulled by strings, and easily enveloped her small form into his arms. As she laughed breathlessly, as if in disbelief with both him and herself, he lifted and then twirled her in the air. Like they were in a fairytale. Like she was the princess, the most important character in the story, and Nate was her Prince Charming.

"Nathaniel," she said. Her eyes were shining, her breath slightly shaking from the laughter. "Nate─I can't─I  have a duty to Zambesi."

Nate set her on the ground, and stared into her eyes. He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and rested a hand on her neck. "Amaya Jiwe," Nate said, his voice gentle, "you deserve everything you want."

Amaya stared at him silently, her eyes blinking to hide something, perhaps tears. "Nathaniel─"

"If you want me to leave you forever," Nate said, "I'll leave you forever." He smiled at her helplessly. "But if this fight with Mallus taught me anything, it's that the world Amaya Jiwe wants is one where everyone is better for it."

Amaya stared at him, silent for a moment. Longer. Impossibly longer. Then, with no warning, she pulled him by the front of his shirt into a fierce kiss. "I love you," she said, again and again, voice shaking.

"We'll be fine," Nate promised, as he held Amaya close. "Zambesi will be fine, Esi will be fine, Kuasa will be fine, Mari will be fine." He kissed the top of her head. "History will be fine, Amaya," he said. "Better than fine."

They'd been slowly sagging into each other, onto the ground.

"Because you get everything you deserve."


End file.
